A Word Against Optimisation
These days much effort is aimed at morning routines or building certain protocols for optimising your productivity, brain function etc.
I’m going to argue that this is not the best path to high performance,.It might even be counterproductive.
The other day a friend asked me my opinion on a particular book being released by a prominent scientist which seems to be a catalogue of protocols to help optimise this and that in your health and productivity. The purpose of this post isn’t to shit on anyones work or criticise the book. I’m sure its full of useful tips. But rather, lets question the overarching premise of “optimisation” of lifestyle, morning routines, and on and on. Its in the zeitgeist now, for sure, but I caution against getting swept along without pause for thought.
Here is why this misses the point for me.
A gym analogy:
I have a client who can bench press 100kg as his PB. And another client who can bench press 140kg as his PB. In strength training, a general rule is that you can walk into the gym and lift 90% of your max in a given exercise on pretty much any day, good, bad, or middling. 90% is in the bag. No optimisation needed, barely any warm up. 95% of your 1RM might be a bit more touch and go, with proper prep needed and thorough warm ups etc. Anything between 98% and 102% (which would be a new PB) is variable, sometimes elusive, and requires peaking, warming up, and the gods to be smiling. That last few percent needs the optimisation and athletes serious and recreational alike spend significant efforts getting everything right for attempts, (these days that includes the camera angle and instagram filter).
But heres the point. The guy who can bench 140kg can bench 135kg on a bad Tuesday after a mediocre sleep and a missed breakfast. The 100kg bench presser needs all ducks in a row, a special optimisation routine, and a bit of good fortune to lift 73% as much.
From a performance perspective, the focus should be on raising your capacity for performance much more than optimising the protocols you rely on for squeezing the last few percent from yourself.
Not only is the over emphasis on protocols and routines missing the biggest gains, and the most significant contributor to your end performance (your capacity), but also has two other significant downsides that might actually be counterproductive; rigidity and fragility.
When your routines become so familiar, and so grooved that deviation is uncomfortable, you have reduced flexibility. Eventually you become dependant on certain conditions to perform. When those conditions are disrupted you become uneasy and a percentage of your focus is now directed inwardly, diluting your available attention for focusing on task, and reducing capacity for performance. This happens all the time when trying to perform in the real world. That rigidity becomes fragility. You are now at the mercy of conditions when it comes to calling forth your best performance. That fragility in itself can become a source of anxiety and diluted focus.
Hypothetical example: I have my morning routine down and I feel awesome most days when I do it, to the point I really notice when I miss one or more elements. But now I’m traveling to give a presentation and I couldn’t sleep well due to nerves and the hotel room being a bit loud, and when I wake up I find I’ve forgotten my creatine and my electrolytes spilled in my bag. The disrupted optimised routine, if I had let it become a crutch, now works against me. Its disruption affects my confidence, my readiness, my focus.
This is not what high performers do, and not what top sports psychologists teach their athletes to do. The best performers focus on preparation, to be sure. But they have a longer timeline, and focus on maximising capacity (skill, knowledge, fitness, strength etc). This produces the capacity for high performance, and a suitable confidence in that capacity. They know that even if the last minute preparation does not go to plan, and factors outside their control impact their ability to implement the perfect pre performance protocol, they are still damn good at what they do and able to do it in sub optimal conditions. Not only does focusing on capacity over a sustained period of time produce better performance, but also a more robust and resilient performance state.
Finally, let me just make one important distinction: routines that optimise your performance usually provide marginal gains at best. But poor habits can produce ruinous results. Optimisation routines are much more about what you do not do, than they are about what you do do. More on that here.
